Summertime action has been hot at Crocodile Bay Resort in Costa Rica! This is by far the best June fishing I have ever seen in my sixteen years at Crocodile Bay. The blue water has been just a couple of miles off the beach, and the sailfish have been here in pretty decent numbers. Yesterday, we had a boat raise eight sailfish and release three of them. As you will see in the video, it is not just the sailfish, but some excellent Marlin fishing as well. We do not typically see this many billfish in June, so I am super happy to have so many excited customers.

On the Tuna front, we have seen some of the best action of the entire year! Almost every pod of dolphin has had tuna with them, and they have been feeding voraciously. We typically catch tuna around schools of spinner dolphin and spotted dolphin, but even the white-bellied dolphin that rarely holds fish, have been getting in on the action. Captain Jonny was joking with me yesterday that there are so many tuna offshore right now that even the sea turtles have taken them on.

Inshore, the Rooster fishing has been remarkably consistent. We continue to catch big roosterfish at Matopalo Point, Iguana Reef, and even in front of our own pier.

There is a lot of bait around, and many different species have been taking advantage of them. We are currently in “Pico Rojo” season, which is a type of ballyhoo with a pronounced red bill. They are in schools of hundreds, if not thousands, in front of our pier and the surrounding areas. They have been attracting everything from snappers to mackerel, barracuda and roosterfish. There are even several small dorados that have taken up residence around our mooring field. I spent half an hour the other day watching as these normally pelagic fish were feeding right under the pier. It was interesting to watch as the dorado changed color from their typical green and yellow to a “camo” of black vertical bars when attacking the baitfish. They stayed in this ‘camo state’ for about ten minutes as they launched repeated attacks on the ballyhoo, ambushing them everywhere. After several successful attacks, the dorado moved away from the bait school and changed back to their natural color of green and yellow.

It has been an unusual summer, but so far a very good one. July is typically a dryer month than May or June, and we usually get a run of marlin and start to see a few more sailfish. As things are currently, with the exciting offshore fishing, it is possible that the fishing could get “turned up to eleven” in the next few weeks.